Hollywood Tower (F.K.A. La Belle Tour) | |
Location | 6200 Franklin Ave., Hollywood, California |
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Coordinates | 34°6′17.5″N118°19′27.9″W / 34.104861°N 118.324417°W Coordinates: 34°6′17.5″N118°19′27.9″W / 34.104861°N 118.324417°W |
Built | 1929 |
Architect | Cramer & Wise |
Architectural style | Late 19th- and 20th-century revivals, Renaissance |
NRHP reference No. | 87002291 [1] |
Added to NRHP | January 22, 1988 |
Hollywood Tower, originally known as La Belle Tour, is a large apartment building in Hollywood, Los Angeles, California. The tower, built in 1929, was a popular residence for entertainment industry employees for many years and has often been cited as the inspiration for Disney's Twilight Zone Tower of Terror attractions. The real-life Hollywood Tower was listed in the National Register of Historic Places in 1988.
The V-shaped building, designed by architects Cramer & Wise in a faux French Normandy style, was built in 1929. At the time, it was a Class A building with more than 50 apartments, with three penthouse units, a subterranean garage, and private and public roof gardens. Located in the heart of Hollywood, the tower became a favorite place of residence for entertainment industry employees. [2] A plaque by the front door reads: "Hollywood Tower. 1929. Sophisticated living for film luminaries during the 'Golden Age' of Hollywood." Actor George Raft owned an interest in the building and lived there for a time. [3] In her novel Stormy Weather, Paula L. Woods wrote: "Hollywood Tower was a seven-story, indecisive gray building at the corner of Franklin and Vista Del Mar in Hollywood. The faux French Normandy apartment building was so old it probably had a view of the sea when it was built [...] Hollywood Tower, though, was a last vestige of an earlier era. You could tell by the way the planting in the front was kept neatly trimmed and the lobby smelled Spic-and-Span clean." [4]
The building directly abuts the Hollywood Freeway, and its neon "HOLLYWOOD TOWER" sign looking directly over the northbound freeway is a Hollywood landmark. Hollywood historian Marc Wanamaker said, "It has been a major landmark since it was built. Even before the freeway, it was a landmark on that hill." [2]
The building was purchased over the years by South American investors for $300,000 in 1937, [5] by Justus P. Seeburg in 1939 for $250,000, [6] and by Sam Gutlin in 1953 for $642,000. [7]
In 1978, the Hollywood Tower was sold to Deseret Properties, a Glendale, California firm owned by Blain Anderson. [8] [9] When Deseret bought the property, it was in poor shape, and the new owner invested approximately $50,000 in new carpeting and paint. However, Deseret found the project to be difficult to operate due to the adoption of rent control by the City of Los Angeles in 1978, and problems collecting rent from tenants who "didn't get that part" or "didn't sell that piece of music". [9] In order to achieve a more stable flow of rental income, the new owner began courting senior citizens as tenants, and by 1981, 31 of the building's 56 apartments were occupied by senior citizens. [9]
The building was sold in 2007 for $34.5 million to a Phoenix-based developer Alliance Residential with plans to build additional units on the land across Vista del Mar. [2] Since the acquisition, ownership has invested more than $1 million in renovations and upgrades to the building and opened the new adjacent development, La Belle, in mid-2010.
As of 2015, The Hollywood Tower has been sold to Los Angeles-based developer MWest Holdings, and managed by their subsidiary, Polaris management. La Belle has been sold to Legacy Partners and is now known as "La Belle at Hollywood Tower". The two buildings are effectively separate entities.
The Hollywood Tower was listed in the National Register of Historic Places in 1988.
Though the architectural styles differ, the Hollywood Tower is "often cited as the inspiration" for the Twilight Zone Tower of Terror attractions at Disney parks in Florida, California, Paris and Tokyo. [2] Like the real-life Hollywood Tower, the "Hollywood Tower Hotel" structure at the Disney theme parks bears the same classic "Hollywood Tower" sign and spiraling towers. A made-for-TV adaptation based on the ride entitled Tower of Terror was released in 1997, though while both the attraction and the movie shared the same basic premise of five people being killed in an elevator, the movie lacked any connection to The Twilight Zone.
The Hollywood Tower appears prominently, by name, in the 1948 mystery film Devil's Cargo , part of The Falcon series. It is also featured in Brian De Palma's 1984 thriller Body Double , a movie notable for its setting in a number of Los Angeles landmarks. The Hollywood Tower received ample screen time in the 1980 screwball comedy Midnight Madness , produced by Walt Disney Productions.
Disney's Hollywood Studios is a theme park at the Walt Disney World Resort in Bay Lake, Florida, near Orlando. It is owned and operated by The Walt Disney Company through its Parks, Experiences and Products division. Based on a concept by Marty Sklar, Randy Bright, and Michael Eisner, the park opened on May 1, 1989, as the Disney-MGM Studios (Theme) Park, and was the third of four theme parks built at Walt Disney World. Spanning 135 acres (55 ha), the park is dedicated to the imagined worlds from film, television, music, and theatre, drawing inspiration from the Golden Age of Hollywood.
The Twilight Zone Tower of Terror, or simply Tower of Terror, is a series of similar accelerated drop tower dark rides located at Disney's Hollywood Studios, Tokyo DisneySea, Walt Disney Studios Park, and formerly located at Disney California Adventure. The attraction is inspired by Rod Serling's anthology television series, The Twilight Zone, and takes place in the fictional Hollywood Tower Hotel in Hollywood, California. The Tokyo version features an original storyline not related to The Twilight Zone and takes place in the fictional Hotel Hightower. All versions of the attraction place riders in a seemingly ordinary hotel elevator, and present a fictional backstory in which people have mysteriously disappeared from the elevator under the influence of a supernatural element many years previously.
Brown Derby was a chain of restaurants in Los Angeles, California. The first and best known was shaped like a derby hat, an iconic image that became synonymous with the Golden Age of Hollywood. It was opened by Wilson Mizner in 1926. The chain was started by Robert H. Cobb and Herbert K. Somborn in the 1920s. The original Brown Derby restaurants had closed or had been converted to other uses by the 1980s, though a Disney-backed Brown Derby national franchising program revived the brand in the 21st century. It is often incorrectly thought that the Brown Derby was a single restaurant, and the Wilshire Boulevard and Hollywood branches are frequently confused.
Jack Oakie was an American actor, starring mostly in films, but also working on stage, radio and television. He portrayed Napaloni in Chaplin's The Great Dictator (1940), receiving a nomination for the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor.
Crossroads of the World is an open-air mall on Sunset Boulevard and Las Palmas in Los Angeles. The mall features a central building designed to resemble an ocean liner surrounded by a small village of cottage-style bungalows. It was designed by Robert V. Derrah, built in 1936, and has been called America's first outdoor shopping mall.
The Carolwood Pacific Railroad (CPRR) was a 7+1⁄4-inch gauge ridable miniature railroad run by Walt Disney in the backyard of his home in the Holmby Hills neighborhood of Los Angeles, California. It featured the Lilly Belle, a 1:8-scale live steam locomotive named after Disney's wife, Lillian Disney, and built by the Walt Disney Studios' machine shop. The locomotive made its first test run on December 24, 1949. It pulled a set of freight cars, as well as a caboose that was almost entirely built by Disney himself. It was Disney's lifelong fascination with trains, as well as his interest in miniature models, that led to the creation of the CPRR. The railroad, which became operational in 1950, was 2,615 feet (797 m) long and encircled his house. The backyard railroad attracted visitors to Disney's home; he invited them to ride and occasionally drive his miniature train. In 1953, after an accident occurred in which a guest was injured, the CPRR was closed to the public.
The Happiest Homecoming on Earth was the eighteen-month-long celebration of the 50th anniversary of the Disneyland theme park, which opened on July 17, 1955. The Happiest Celebration on Earth commemorated fifty years of Disney theme parks, and celebrated Disneyland's milestone throughout Disney parks all over the globe.
Tower of Terror is a 1997 American supernatural horror television film written and directed by D. J. MacHale and starring Steve Guttenberg and Kirsten Dunst. It is based on the theme-park attraction, The Twilight Zone Tower of Terror, at the Walt Disney World Resort in Bay Lake, Florida, and aired on ABC on October 26, 1997, as a presentation of The Wonderful World of Disney. It is Disney's first film based on one of its theme-park attractions and the only one produced for television.
El Capitan Theatre is a fully restored movie palace at 6838 Hollywood Blvd. in Hollywood. The theater and adjacent Hollywood Masonic Temple is owned by The Walt Disney Company and serves as the venue for a majority of the Walt Disney Studios' film premieres.
The Hollywood Pantages Theatre, formerly known as RKO Pantages Theatre, is located at Hollywood and Vine, in Hollywood. Designed by architect B. Marcus Priteca, it was the last theater built by the vaudeville impresario Alexander Pantages. The palatial Art Deco theater opened on June 4, 1930, as part of the Pantages Theatre Circuit.
Hollywood Land is a themed land at Disney California Adventure park at the Disneyland Resort in Anaheim, California. The area is inspired by the 1930s Golden Age period of Hollywood and hosts attractions themed to this concept, including a backlot of a typical Hollywood studio. The land opened as Hollywood Pictures Backlot with the park in 2001.
Cahuenga Boulevard is a major boulevard of northern Los Angeles, California, US. The “Cahuenga” name is a Spanish, phonetic derivative with no actual Spanish language meaning that is attributed to the Tongva village of Kawengna, meaning "place of the mountain". It connects Sunset Boulevard in the heart of old Hollywood to the Hollywood Hills and North Hollywood in the San Fernando Valley.
Production Courtyard is a themed land at Walt Disney Studios Park in Disneyland Resort Paris. A large section of its original 2002 footprint is now cordoned off as part of the park's Hollywood Boulevard placemaking project, including the addition of The Twilight Zone Tower of Terror. It is expected this development will eventually encompass the whole of Production Courtyard with a full Hollywood theme.
Hollywood Masonic Temple, now known as the El Capitan Entertainment Centre and also formerly known as Masonic Convention Hall, is a building on Hollywood Boulevard in the Hollywood neighborhood of Los Angeles, California, U.S., that was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1985. The building, built in 1921, was designed by architect John C. Austin, also noted as the lead architect of the Griffith Observatory. The Masons operated the temple until 1982, when they sold the building after several years of declining membership. The 34,000-square-foot building was then converted into a theater and nightclub, and ownership subsequently changed several times, until it was bought by the Walt Disney Company's Buena Vista Pictures Distribution in 1998 for Buena Vista Theatres, Inc.
The Old Warner Brothers Studio, officially called today Sunset Bronson Studios, is a motion picture, radio and television production facility located on Sunset Boulevard in Hollywood, California. The studio was the site where the first talking feature film, The Jazz Singer, was filmed in 1927.
The Sunset Tower Hotel, previously known as The St. James's Club and The Argyle, is a historic building and hotel located on the Sunset Strip in West Hollywood, California. Designed in 1929 by architect Leland A. Bryant, opened in 1931, it is considered one of the finest examples of Art Deco architecture in the Los Angeles area. In its early years, it was the residence of many Hollywood celebrities, including John Wayne and Howard Hughes. After a period of decline in the early 1980s, the building was renovated and has been operated as a luxury hotel under the names The St. James's Club, The Argyle, and most recently the Sunset Tower Hotel. The building was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1980.
Walker & Eisen (1919−1941) was an architectural partnership of architects Albert R. Walker and Percy A. Eisen in Los Angeles, California.
Leland A. Bryant (1890–1954) was an architect who primarily worked in the Los Angeles area. Bryant had a short career as an architect that was ended by the Great Depression, but constructed many large Châteauesque apartment buildings, popular among many celebrities including Marilyn Monroe and John Wayne
Guardians of the Galaxy – Mission: Breakout! is an accelerated drop tower dark ride attraction at the Disney California Adventure park at the Disneyland Resort. Based on the characters from the Marvel Cinematic Universe, it depicts Rocket recruiting guests to attempt to free the remaining Guardians of the Galaxy from display within the Collector's fortress.
Lester A. Cramer was an American architect. His most famous work was the Ecclesia, the Rosicrucian healing temple on Mount Ecclesia.